for the Anglo-Saxon race to lead the way to this democracy, the only question will be whether England or America is to be the leader. England has hitherto rather assumed this leadership in civilization; but the power and disposition of her hereditary classes tend in some important respects to retard her steps; and so far as this influence has been prevalent she has resisted rather than furthered the progress of ultimate democracy, and at the same time she has misdelineated its real characteristics. The English conservative and higher social classes exhibit rather too ready a disposition to attribute whatever excesses of plutocracy America has lately furnished, to the assumed democracy of her institutions. A better analysis, however, of underlying conditions will show that these excesses are but the parasites of material growth; and that it is a libel upon real democracy to call them her fruits. Besides this, in the minds of many well-wishers there is a fear concerning the permanency of democratic institutions, found. ed upon the dismal platitude that history repeats itself. Some of the English writers have been especially active within the last few years in drawing par. allels between the democracies of Greece and Rome and that of America, and in holding up the ancient republics as warnings which indicate the inevitable fate of modern democracy. But, in point of fact, the repetition of history is to a considerable extent a delusion. History in the larger sense does not repeat itself. No one century is like its prede

cessor. In all the resemblances of the past to the present there are important differences. New factors constantly make their appearance for the first time to modify the existing civilization, and so essentially to distinguish it from its predecessors as to make an analogy misleading. Each age takes to itself new and important qualities, which had no existence in any preceding age. Viewing each age as the sum of its predecessors, civilization has been essentially progressive.

Among the types of government which have been thoroughly tried in the past, democracy is not one. In the meantime each of the other types has had a thorough and an efficient trial. Viewing the general tendency of civilization from the beginning, there is a warrant, therefore, for the belief that the true trial for democracy is yet to come; that this form of government is gradually taking to itself those elements of permanency which it never possessed before.

In undertaking an analogy between Hellenic and Roman democracy, on the one hand, and that which is struggling for expression in America to-day, on the other, one cannot but be struck with the utter unlikeness between the ancient and the modern types in all that relates to industry. Nothing is so characteristic of the Grecian and Roman democracies as the abject servitude in which all industry was held, and the corresponding predominance in which the military spirit prevailed. Contempt

was universally felt and shown for all industrial pursuits, and this was especially the case among the Greeks.1

While human nature, generally speaking, has like characteristics in each age, the conditions which surround it change. The relation of the individual towards the concensus of individuals, called the government, whether that government be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a republic, has essentially new features at each succession; and the change has not been a capricious one; it has been persistent and in one direction under the constant law of evolutioninterrupted at times, lapsing at times, but reasserting itself, overcoming the interruptions and obstacles, and proceeding in its fixed course. Democracy may be described to-day in the same terms that were employed by Perikles. Human frailties may be described in the same terms now as then. But this relation of the individual toward his government, by reason of the intervening influences, has essentially changed; and the changes are all of a

1 "It is observable that in the cities of Greece, especially those whose principal object was war, all lucrative arts and professions were considered unworthy of a freeman. 'Most arts,' says Xenophon (Memorabilia, Bk. V.), 'corrupt and enervate the bodies of those that exercise them; they oblige them to sit in the shade, or near the fire. They can find no leisure, either for their friends or for the republic.' It was only by the corruption of some democracies that artisans became freemen. This we learn from Aristotle (Polit., Bk. III., ch. iv.), who maintains that a well regulated republic will never give them the right and freedom of the city.

"In fine, every kind of low commerce was infamous among the Greeks; as it obliged a citizen to serve and wait on a slave, on a lodger, or a stranger. This was a notion that clashed with the spirit of Greek liberty; hence

character which tend to confer national longevity and political and industrial equality. There does not appear to have been the slightest conception among the Greeks or the Romans of the dignity of industry, or of its influence toward the promotion of political equality. They dreamed of no material bond of union from this source. Neither the Grecian nor the Roman republic conceived of any thing like a federation upon equal terms. They could therefore entertain no idea of the prevalence of industry, or the entire subjection of militancy to it. When these essential differences are considered, it must be plain to any one with a moderate capacity for rightthinking, how impossible to the Greek or to the Roman was such an idea as the federation of our thirteen States, beginning with a population of three millions of people, and growing within a hundred years into thirty-eight States with a population of sixty millions, with but one civil war in the century to interfere with the progress of that growth, and that war brought about to eradicate an evil which was a legacy from a preceding type of civilizationa war which had its motive in furthering the security and perpetuity of the federation.

Plato (Bk. XI.), in his laws, orders a citizen to be punished if he attempts to concern himself with trade.

Thus in the Greek republics the magistrates were extremely embarrassed. They would not have the citizens apply themselves to trade, to agriculture, or to the arts, and yet they would not have them idle. They found, therefore, employment for them in gymnic and military exercises; and none else were allowed by their institution." (See "Spirit of Laws," Montesquieu, Book IV., Chap. 8.)

As in contrast with England, then, our advantages seem to be the greater; but in both England and America a great deal yet remains to be accomplished. In our progress, as we have seen, there are many deterrents, not the least of which is a sentimental reverence for old orders joined with the fear of retrogression in the substitution of political right for hereditary privilege. There are many whose minds are preoccupied with memories and regrets, who fancy that we are passing from a better stage to a worse, and who reverence the past all the more on account of their ever-increasing dread of the unknown future.

Sixty years ago the Poet-laureate dreamed of a future for the race, the consummation of which was that "the common-sense of most shall hold the fretful realm in awe." Sixty years after, revisiting the scene of his early inspiration, finding the dream unrealized, the illusion broken, the idol shattered, he exclaims:

"Poor old Heraldry, poor old History, poor old Poetry, passing hence,

In the common deluge drowning old political common-sense!'

When we consider that no preceding century has been signalized by anything like the degree of physical change which has marked the past twenty-five years we may realize the weight of these regrets. Among those who are lingering in the march of civilization many have passed the meridian of life; these come by habit of thought to live in the past, and